The Piper
by Estoma
Summary: "Gale Hawthorne, you are charged with 117 counts of murder." Cover image by ApriLittle.


**Author's notes: For Sara, on her birthday. Slight AU. Using the prompt 'music notes' from Caesar's Palace. **

Mountains loomed high above, hulking, great bulks in the fading light. The day was still early but the clouds roiled overhead, grey and black and purple, heralding a blizzard. On days like this, the light left early. For those who were born in District 2 it was not an occasion to fear but Gale felt a heavy sense of foreboding settle over his shoulders. When the door opened he kept his gaze on the small window. Two sets of footsteps stopped in the doorway to the small room; there was the measured tread of a senior official, and the light tap of his personal assistant's heels on the concrete.

"Any questions about tomorrow?"

Gale shook his head.

"You'll be summoned at ten o'clock. There won't be much expected of you."

"Right," Gale muttered. He kept his gaze on the darkening window, watching the clouds swirl furiously and gather their strength for an assault on the district. The blizzard might blow itself out in a few hours, or it would settle in and harrow the district for a week.

The door opened and closed again, but only one set of footsteps receded up the corridor. Gale held still, defiantly not looking to the woman standing in the doorway. He could hear her breathing in the stillness. Snow was starting to beat against the window.

"Hello, Gale."

"You're dead," he whispered.

There was no hostility in her voice, but no warmth, either. "You'd have preferred that, wouldn't you?"

"Madge, I-" He turned at last. She was not wearing the light, silken dresses he used to mock as they filed into the Reaping pens. Her skirt and suit all made clean, hard lines and her hair was not down to frame her face. The rebellion had changed them all.

"It's been four years, Gale."

"I thought you were killed. The firebombs, I saw them fall."

"No," she shook her head. "You thought it would have been easier, if I were."

"Madge, the district was ruined. I, I _cried_ for you for weeks."

When she shook her head, a smile came to her lips but not to her eyes. Her gaze was as unrelenting as the jagged peaks outside. "I'm sure you did. And _she_ comforted you, while I waited in the bunker under my father's house. You never came back. You never came back for me."

"Then why are you here now?"

"You know why. This is my last chance to speak to you."

_With breath frosting the night air, the boy leant against the wall. He thrust his hands in his pockets and gazed up to the lighted window. There was an expectant pause, and then the delicate nots trickled out into the dark, strains of a long forgotten symphony. The boy listened with his lips parted and the cold forgotten. When the last note shivered on the air, fading away to silence, the boy reached into his pocket and took out a wooden pipe. Carved with veins and leaves, a crude tracery, when the boy set it to his lips he sent a different sort of music into the night. Wild and haunting, it twisted up to the window and settled on the edge with a different kind of grace to the grand piano. And he played. The music evoked wild, erotic scenes; Pan and his nymphs dancing under a full moon and casting themselves naked on the leaves. _

_ When he stopped playing, he stepped away from the wall, into the square of light cast by the window. At her stool, the girl quivered and set her pale fingers to the keys once more. She offered up a steady beat, and the boy joined her in a melody. _

They marched him into the echoing tomb, two peacekeepers and handcuffs as if he were dangerous. Even when his hands were cuffed to the rails of the dock, his escort didn't fall back.

"Gale Hawthorne, your actions were taken in a time of war. But even war cannot condone some acts. You are charged with 117 counts of murder and 351 counts of causing grievous bodily harm. The jury has deliberated." President Paylor paused to let her words sink in. The echoes died around the courtroom and she fixed her keen brown eyes on Gale. He kept his own stubbornly averted from the woman who let him fight to give her the position she held and now accused him of it. Beetee had already been trialled of the same crimes but he brokered a deal to save himself from the firing squad, and his genius was too good to waste. He had a place in peacetime, but Gale had risen to prominence in war and fire: a weapon. Weapons were tossed aside and locked away when the fighting was done.

"Foreman, your verdict?"

The juror stood and bowed to his president, then turned his gaze to Gale. His face was set as hard and unforgiving as the mountains that framed the Justice Building outside. High up in the gallery, the crowd leaned forwards, their faces alight and eager. Gale had been glad his trial was in District 2, for he thought the people there would be more forgiving to violence. But he'd only know the district in civil war, and now the fighting was done, they were keener than most to put it behind them. Gale closed his eyes but he could still feel the weight of three hundred people holding their breath.

"We find the accused guilty of all charges," the foreman said, his last words lost in the cheers of the crowd.


End file.
